


Possessed by Night

by Leeayre



Series: Persona Verse [3]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Persona, Consensual Possession, M/M, Possessive Red Hood, Robin tries hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:26:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leeayre/pseuds/Leeayre
Summary: Damaged and weak, Robin returns to Gotham, determined to save the city's protectors from an impending threat, except Jason isn't too happy about the little Persona's return or the betrayal it represents, and Tim (stuck in the middle of it all) has no idea why he keeps ending up in Gotham in the middle of the night.Note: This is a revised version of the story from ff.net. I wasn't happy with the original and I wanted to put all my Persona stuff together. It might also become an explicit version of the story, I haven't decided.





	Possessed by Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Persona:** the mask or façade presented to satisfy the demands of the situation or the environment and not representing the inner personality of the individual. — _Dictionary. com_

Robin paused on the edge of the roof, tattered cape brushing his ankles, as the streets below him swam alarmingly. He was breathing heavily in some misplaced attempt to steady himself. It was no use. It was no more than the physical, meaningless habit of a body trying to compensate for the real problem. It didn’t stop the blurring vision. The arms at his sides were as good to him as lead, the act of lifting them nearly impossible. There was still strength left in his limbs, despite how unaccustomed they were to this kind of use, despite how they ached from the strain, but he couldn’t hold onto control of them any longer. He’d reached his limit.

“Not now. Not _now_.” He hadn’t realized how badly he’d overestimated those limits. Panic dragged him down like a weight as his vision darkened. He scrabbled to stay in control, but the fight only exhausted him faster.

No, no, _no_. He couldn’t leave _Tim_ like this, unprotected and alone, displaced from his home, probably terrified, but he couldn’t stop it. He was already losing his grip on Tim’s consciousness, the tattered leather of his own physical form fading from the boy’s slender limbs.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, knowing it was no use, before the world went black and soundless and altogether empty.

* * *

Tim blinked once, sleepily, trying to dispel the cobweb-like clinging of a dream lingering past its expiration, distorting reality. He expected the blurry, nonsensical images to fade into the soft down of a mattress and cocoon-like coziness of the comforter wrapped around him, to wake in the warm darkness. Instead, the dream only solidified: the prick of gravel beneath his bare feet, the chill night air through the thin protection of pajamas, the bark of a dog. A car horn honked suddenly beneath him, loud and shrill, blasting apart what dream-daze remained. It startled him rudely into instant and full consciousness. Tim sucked in a breath, fighting the swift onset of vertigo, because he was  _on_  a  _roof_ and those were  _real_  cars beneath him. He jerked back away from the edge, gasping for air through the panic constricting his lungs and reeling at the veritable flood of unexpected sensory input.

He couldn't remember having gotten there. He'd gone to sleep, that was all. He'd gone to sleep, and he'd woken up on some forsaken  _rooftop_  in downtown Gotham—what he  _hoped_  was Gotham. For a minute the panic consumed him, burning high and bright. His heart thudded painfully fast as his eyes darted around, trying to take in the unfamiliar buildings around him, the flickering of streetlights, the whistle of the wind. He was still backing up, one foot after the other, clutching his shivering arms, shoulders hunched around the pounding of his heart. He only realized it when he nearly tripped over a protruding pipe and his heart redoubled its efforts in renewed panic. The world tilted alarmingly, edging toward black, and he realized he didn't know if he was going to have a heart attack or hyperventilate first. Swallowing down the hysteria that threatened to consume him, he stopped, took a minute to just clench his chattering teeth, fill his lungs, and get a grip.

He was in Gotham—those were Gotham buildings, they had to be. He could figure this out. He could find a way home.

Slowly his breathing steadied, his heart rate slowed. First things first: get off the roof.

Cool logic prevailing now, he found the fire escape easily, the wind whipping his pajamas tight to his legs and chest as he made his way down into the alley below. Eyes glanced up as he jumped the last couple feet to the ground, watching him from the darkness between garbage cans and old cardboard boxes.

"You all right, boy?"

The question caught him off guard, and as his head jerked to look, his feet stomped down on broken glass. Tim hissed, hobbling helplessly for a minute in the alleyway's grime, but the man was standing up now, ratty blankets falling to the ground, stumbling toward him. Tim took off at a limping run, heading for the street, ignoring the raspy, "Hey, wait!" called out behind him. He didn't want to find out whether the man really intended to help or not, or what he might have to trade for that help.

More eyes turned curiously as he burst onto the street. Eyes he ignored. There was no way he was going to avoid catching unwanted attention. Not barefoot in pajamas. Not looking like a lost little rich kid. He ground his teeth, but there was no helping it.

Several blocks later the fear was wearing thin into growing frustration with still no recognizable landmarks—this was not a part of Gotham he frequented. As the alarm faded though, he began to realize just how sore his arms and legs were. Tim frowned down at roughened, bruised knuckles and rubbed at the burn in his biceps and thighs. He couldn't make sense of it. Not any of it.

If someone had kidnapped him, why leave him on a roof? If he'd truly been unconscious at all, why the bruised knuckles? Why the sore muscles? And if he hadn't been unconscious, why couldn't he remember?

Despair began to sweep in, clogging his thoughts. He didn't know how he'd gotten here. He'd been walking for blocks. He didn't recognize  _anything_.

Suddenly a hand slid around his shoulder, gripping tight.

"Whoa-ho!" A man stepped out in front of him, barring his way with a, "Lovin' the jammies, kid. What you—" He didn't get any further. Tim broke his wrist and dodged past, leaving the man cursing, bent over his hand, his comrades too inebriated to do more than laugh at his predicament instead of coming after Tim. It was just as well. Tim didn't know if he could have dealt so easily with more than one.

He ran, feet numb now to the glass shards still embedded there, the sharp concrete, and the cold. He ran from the pointed curses echoing off the brick behind him, from the outstretched claws of the city waiting to swallow him, from the whole nightmare. Running like that, everything turned into a rush of color, streaks of grays and browns and pastel streetlights.

Somewhere along the way, the blur of colors faded into black. Later, much later, when he thought about it, he'd realize there might have been screaming before everything faded out completely. As it was, when he woke later that morning, back in his snug bed, he was more than glad to let the relief flood his body and accept the whole thing as a too-real, too-strange dream. Except… He threw back the blankets with arms that nearly shook with unexplainable fatigue for a night spent in quiet slumber, and felt the relief drain away as quickly as it had come.

There were layers of gauze wrapped around his bloody, ruined feet.

* * *

Nightwing and Red Hood disagreed on a number of things. How to do their jobs. The vessels they'd chosen. The fact that Hood existed at all. Whatever the case, it was never a surprise to see them arguing instead of crime fighting. Or arguing  _and_  crime fighting as was currently the case.

Jason gleefully took out the knee of the man rushing at him with a bullet, hammering an elbow into his face a moment later. More because it ticked off Nightwing than because it was necessary. And it kept Red Hood happy. Always a bonus. Though in truth, his pleasures had long since meshed inseparably from the Persona's.

"That kind of needless damage…"

"Take a night off, Pretty Boy. We got this."

"Taking them out doesn't mean leaving them in the hospital!" Nightwing's escrimas caught one poor bugger brutally hard in the ribs, his irritation showing through.

"This was our fight in the first place!" Jason growled, even as he pressed back-to-back with the other man, working together even when they weren't. "Go find your own!"

“ _Butt out!_ ” Hood snarled his agreement, even if only Jason could hear. If he were honest, he enjoyed Nightwing's presence— _Dick's_ presence, the man under the mask just as present as Jason was in Hood. In any fight, there was no one better at his back, no one more interesting to trade quips with. Even Hood had some appreciation for the other Persona's moves.

"I would!" Nightwing's sleek boot stomped hard into the chest of a mace-wielding punk, sending him crashing back into his friend behind, and that, that right there, was one of the reasons he liked Nightwing despite the annoying lectures: he could be so beautifully violent. "If you didn't need so much babysitting!" Jason's own boot crunched the fingers of a man grasping desperately for his knife, even as he grinned maniacally—a grin echoed by Hood, or maybe Hood's glee seeping into him. They'd been born in blood and pain, walking the razor-fine edge of sanity. He opened his mouth to retort…

Then a Robin-rang flew past him and embedded in the shoulder blade of the man sneaking up on his left.

Jason blinked, instantly forgetting what he'd been about to say, eyes going wide at the flicker of green and yellow and red.

“Holy Shit!” he yelped disbelievingly—it was definitely a yelp, a very undignified yelp. "Robin?!" In his head, Hood had gone worrisomely still.

"What?" Even Nightwing startled, wiping out their last opponent with a kick to his temple that crumpled him on the spot, and went springing to the side of the building to see. Because nobody, not a single good Persona in Gotham, wanted to see Robin again. Not after last time.

Not that anyone could stop the Persona from choosing a new vessel, just that Jason had seriously thought it was the end after Joker had beaten him to a pulp. But down beneath them, soaring around the corner of the alley, was the definite flicker of a cape, flaring yellow along the underside.

"Hell." Jason threw himself over the railing, Nightwing following, and just that quickly the night went from routine bickering to rooftop racing.

"He's back? Why is he back?" Nightwing demanded as they landed on the ledge of an adjacent building, wind whipping past, already running before their feet had even touched down.

"Like I should know!"

"You said he died!"

"He did die!" Jason ground his teeth. When he caught that little Persona, he was going to tear its little cape off. The traitor. Maybe demand to know (forcefully) what it thought it was doing dragging another kid into this mess. “ _I don’t know which idiot wished this hard for Robin’s return, but I’m going to teach him a lesson or two_.” Maybe put him out of commission more permanently.

Ahead of them, Robin ducked between a wind-whipped wall of second-story construction tarps, vanishing into the unfinished building behind. Nightwing leapt after him, landing gracefully moments later. Jason hesitated a moment and then swung around, hoping to cut the littler Persona off on the other side. Slipping in through an unfinished window, he made his way to a central hall, examining the darkness for movement. Finding none, he chose a direction, glancing down connecting corridors as he passed, looking for the familiar green and yellow and red. It wasn't until he hurried around a corner, he nearly collided with the other Persona.

“There you are!” Jason reached out, but Robin ducked out of reach before he could snag him. Apparently the little Persona had managed to lose Nightwing temporarily in the labyrinth of building materials. That was just fine, because that meant there was no one to interrupt him. Jason materialized a Glock, following when Robin threw himself behind the nearest corner. Now he had him. On this side of the building the windows had already been installed at the end of the corridor, and there was no way to get out except through Jason.

Robin half-crouched tensely at the end of the corridor, bo gripped defensively.

“Why are you running?” Jason asked. Because tonight wasn’t a game. It wasn’t some free-spirited spoof of rooftop tag. Robin didn’t get to just come back and act like nothing happened. It didn’t work like that.

“Depends.” Robin shifted—a slow, tired shift of weight from one foot to the other. “Why do you have a gun?” This close Jason could see that Robin was a mess, all burned and torn, practically swaying in place, like he’d just come from running into a dozen burning buildings. That was strange, but… No. It _didn’t matter_.

“To keep your latest victim safe.”

Robin recoiled, mouth twisting unhappily. It was someone else’s mouth though. Someone else’s raven hair disheveled when he shook his head. Someone he’d stolen. Jason wasn’t going to feel bad about upsetting him. His grip tightened on the Glock, because this couldn’t go on.

Unfortunately, that was as far as he got.

He sucked in an angry breath at discovering he couldn’t lift his arm. He physically could not move it.

“Hood!” he snarled, because there was only one person capable of immobilizing him like this. “What are you doing?!” This was not the time for internal discord. Not when Robin was _right in front of him_.

“ _You think I don’t know what this is about?_ ”

“It’s about dealing with a murdering little traitor!” He glared at Robin, struggling against Hood’s grip.

“ _I won’t let him take you back_.”

“What the actual he—” Jason tried desperately to lift his arm, either of them, practically thrashing in his outrage. “No one’s taking anyone back!” He’d never wanted to throttle Hood more than just then, and it was only marginally dissuading that he’d technically have to throttle _himself_ to do it. Robin was watching him sadly. “I’m gonna clip his little wings if I have to do it with my teeth…” In response, Hood’s body armor tightened possessively.

So he could only stand there when Robin walked past him, hand pressing hesitantly to his arm for a moment as he passed. For just that moment, as Robin stood there, he thought he saw the Persona flicker. It was the kind of flicker reminiscent of a dying neon sign, a short somewhere in the wiring, and it froze Jason mid-grapple for control with Hood, because... What had that been about? He'd almost seen the kid under the costume, the pajamas under the Kevlar, and that was dangerous. Even Hood seemed distinctly unsettled, materializing the boot knife uneasily, as though he might need to protect Jason. Or maybe it was Jason unconsciously wanting the extra protection. It was hard to separate the two.

“I’m sorry, Jason.” Then Robin was gone, out of sight.

"Hood!" Jason warned. 

“ _You think I don’t know how long you waited for him? How long you kept excepting him to come back to you? If you think incapacitating his current vessel will force him back to you…_ ” Hood’s voice became a low growl in his head. “ _He isn’t yours anymore, I am!_ ” Then finally, _finally_ he could move again. The Glock fired into the wall where Robin had been.

“You let him get away?” Nightwing had finally found them, appearing at his side, eyebrow raised at the hole in the wall.  

“Hood did!” Jason nearly clawed the helmet off, needing some air. Not that he could escape the brooding Persona in his own head. “ _I can’t believe you let him go!_ ”

“We can still catch up. Which way did he go?”

“This way,” Jason grunted, taking off down the hallway, not waiting for the other Persona to follow. They reached an open window just in time to see a familiar cape disappear around the corner of the building one over.

"Why?" Nightwing asked, even as he swung his legs over the sill and shot his grapple. "Robin should recognize my Persona. Why is he running from us?"

"Because he knows I'm going to strangle him when I catch him," Jason growled. He couldn't get that flicker out of his head though, couldn't wash the bad feeling away. He kept seeing it as he swung across the street below, landing beside Nightwing on the ledge of the building one over. Instead of following the ledge around though, he jumped for an outcropping, swinging himself up onto the next level higher, trying to get above Robin, maybe get the drop on him. Below him, Nightwing shook his head, answering his own thoughts.

"Poor kid's probably frightened. Maybe it's affecting the Persona."

Jason considered mentioning what he'd seen, the worrying flicker, but it didn't matter if they couldn't get their hands on him.

"All the more reason to catch him," he replied instead, putting on a little burst of speed. But by the time they reached the edge of the next roof, Jason realized they weren't going to catch up. Robin had too much of a lead on them now.

Losing patience fast, he skidded to a halt along a wrought-iron balcony, punching the rusted rail as he watched that same flicker of a cape they'd been trailing glide away into the gloom. Taunting him. Jason had had enough.

Sighting for that faraway flicker, he aimed a Glock. A bullet through the knee would put him out of commission for a while, keep him safe, and it was a lot kinder than what Gotham would do to the kid. Merciful like. Of course, he hadn't accounted for his companion.

"Jeez! That's a kid in there!" He didn't see Nightwing's fist coming. In retrospect, he should have. It came from the left, fast and hard, and that was the last thing he remembered that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was brought to my attention that some people couldn't see this story, so I thought I'd copy it over here even though I don't have more than the first chapter fixed. 
> 
> Rating subject to change. I'm still working some things out.


End file.
